September 11 is a date that borders on sacred to most Americans.
The day in 2001 when Islamic terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people on
American soil permanently changed the nation. It is seared in our minds.

Eleven years later on
that day in 2012, as Americans were honoring those victims, Egyptians attacked
the American Embassy in Cairo. They ripped the American flag to shreds and
hoisted a black Islamist flag.

The same day, terrorists
attacked the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. They murdered four
Americans, including the ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

The Benghazi attack in
particular was horrific and deeply shameful for a number of reasons. Less than
a year before, the U.S. had provided the military power to overthrow Libya’s dictator,
Muammar Qadhafi. Ambassador Stevens was personally involved. He risked his life
to help ensure the Libyans would have a more democratic government. Because of
his efforts to promote democracy, Stevens became the target of a terrorist
group affiliated with al Qaeda. He knew about it and told Washington that his
life was under threat. The last day of his life, he was pleading with the
American government to send more help to protect him. There is evidence that
the consulate staff was appealing for help while shots were being fired—and help
was denied.

Why didn’t the U.S.
fulfill that request? Why not send help to a man so dedicated, so willing to
risk his life for his country? That is a maddening question.

Sadly, however, it was
only the first of several aspects of the Benghazi attack and its
aftermath that should be a source of dismay and sadness for every American, and
for anyone concerned for America.

First, the administration
of President Barack Obama immediately implemented an aggressive strategy
to cover up and deflect blame for what had happened. Though they knew
straightaway that it was an al Qaeda-linked attack, administration officials,
including then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, downplayed it as a
spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Muslim YouTube video. Rather than
countering the murderous terrorist attack, they directed their loudest
condemnation at the video for its religious intolerance! They went to
tremendous lengths pretending this “inflammatory” video was to blame—even farcically
arresting the filmmaker—while doing nothing to bring those terrorists to
justice!

Investigations have since
made abundantly plain just how numerous and blatant the administration’s lies
about what happened that night really were. Never has a president and
his staff been so brazen and deliberate in using deceit!

To this day,nothing has been done about
those Libyan terrorists who killed America’s ambassador and three others on the
most painful date possible! This is a massive insult to our country and our
dead. But it doesn’t infuriate our people the way it should.

America’s
pathetic response to the Benghazi attack was far more dangerous
than it was insulting—because it showed the entire world how weak this nation
has become. It
was a spectacle of American weakness. It
did a lot to inflame the disrespect, disgust and contempt that our enemies are
showing with growing brashness.

Should it surprise us to
see America under such attack today—when the nation’s own president
won’t even defend it? The Obama administration’s response to Benghazi was
consistent with how the president has repeatedly apologized on behalf of
America and acted like our enemies’ hatred is justified. In his view, America
is the cause of the world’s grievances and ills. The United States is
the real problem.

How could a U.S.
president undermine America’s interests so completely? How could he be so
sympathetic to his country’s enemies—and so casual about defending his
country’s honor and welfare?

Amassing Power

This president has not
been weak on everything. Far from it. At the same time the Obama administration
has undermined America’s power abroad, it has amassed power within the
nation in the federal government, especially in the presidency itself.
This may seem contradictory, but in fact it is another side of the same story.

In case after case,
this administration has taken more power for itself and increased its control
over the American people. President Obama modified and ignored a number of
provisions of the Affordable Care Act with barely a pretense of legality. He
launched a military campaign in Libya without congressional approval. He evaded
the constitutional requirement that the Senate confirm high-level government
officials by appointing “czars.” He asserted the right to kill American
citizens without due process if a “high-level official” says they pose an
imminent threat to the nation.

Examples of this
trend abound. Here is a short list: President Obama deciding to ignore laws he
does not like, choosing not to deport illegal immigrants who would have been
allowed to stay in the country if Congress had passed the “Dream Act”;
the Federal Bureau of Investigation admitting it uses surveillance drones over
U.S. soil; the powerful Internal Revenue Service targeting the president’s
enemies, mostly conservative and pro-Israel groups, to suppress their political
involvement before the presidential election; the Justice Department secretly
seizing the records of more than 20 Associated Press phone lines in what was
called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion”—while the attorney general
claimed to know nothing about it; the National Security Agency (NSA) conducting
illegal, covert surveillance programs in violation of the Fourth Amendment,
keeping phone and Internet records of millions of Americans with the full
cooperation of nine major Internet companies. Such revelations have surfaced
repeatedly throughout this presidency.

Before President
Obama was reelected, Franklin Graham, the son of the famous preacher Billy
Graham, said two of his ministries were targeted by the irs. He believed a
newspaper ad they ran supporting an amendment against same-sex “marriage”
triggered an audit jeopardizing their tax-exempt status. The process took more
than twice as long as usual, and it wasn’t finished until just after President
Obama was reelected. Many other conservative groups told similar stories. This indicates an
unprecedented amount of political meddling! This administration blatantly
manipulated the political process, and the nation is too weak to do anything
about it!

If you aren’t paying
attention to this trend, you should be. Many people are trying to pretend there
is no real problem, and that those who are concerned are overreacting. But this
should deeply trouble every American! There
is an unparalleled spirit of lawlessness here—and it is leading
to an outcome far worse than most people realize.

Data Collection

In June 2013, we
learned that the nsa has a secret data warehouse in Utah,
a “billion-dollar epicenter” where it can store massive amounts of information.
Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, YouTube, aol, Skype, PalTalk and
Apple were caught handing over to the government all kinds of
information about Americans—including phone records, e-mails and other digital
communications—and claimed they were forced to do so. However, the NSA says there is no
cause for concern: An agency spokeswoman said that “[i]ts operations will be
lawfully conducted in accordance with U.S. laws and policies.” Does that
reassure you? Has this administration done anything to suggest that it
is careful to follow the law?

When a ceremony was
held in May 2013 to celebrate completion of the Utah data center’s exterior, it
was “closed to the public—an exclusive, invitation-only gathering that barred
even the mayor of Bluffdale,” the Associated Press reported. “The nsa also rejected a
request by city officials to take a group of visiting Utah mayors on a bus tour
of the outside of the facility. The agency said all tours—even of the
exterior—are prohibited” (June 13, 2013).

Whyall
the secrecy? Washington claimed it needs all this information for America’s
war against terrorism. It was expanding the nsa’s powers
exponentially, using the war on terrorism as the rationale. Yet at the
same time, the president gave a speech telling Americans that thereisno war on
terrorism. “This war, like all wars, must end,” he said. America shouldn’t
be on “a perpetual wartime footing.” He claimed that the war is winding down,
thanks to several victories by his administration. If this is all true, what
does the government need that Utah facility for?

Despite all the data
the government is collecting, it did not stop the Boston Marathon bombers in
2013. It didn’t stop an Islamist from killing four Marines at two military
installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2015. It didn’t stop two Muslims
from killing 14 people in San Bernardino that year. It didn’t stop a man who
pledged allegiance to the Islamic State from killing 49 people in Orlando,
Florida, in June. The “underwear bomber” wasn’t stopped in 2009 by the
surveillance program, but by a tip from the would-be bomber’s parents. How many
terrorists is this program catching? Some analysts say jihadists tend to use
online resources that popular search engines don’t even see. That means these
surveillance tools are basically only good for gathering data on law-keeping
citizens.

William Binney, a
32-year veteran of the NSA turned
whistle-blower, was asked where the surveillance data was heading. He said: “It’s really a turnkey
situation, where it can be turned quickly and become a totalitarian state
pretty quickly. The
capacities to do that is being set up” (emphasis mine throughout). That is a
chilling statement—it gets to the heart of the issue! Look at the potential
power the government already has.

What kind of a
mind-set is behind the nsa secret data
warehouse in Utah? This nsa veteran says “it
can be turned quickly and become a totalitarian state pretty quickly”!

Are we afraid to
even ponder what the radical left’s agenda really is?

Fox News’s Bob
Beckel, a Democrat, said the nsa data mining “is
strikingly close to authoritarian rule that has no place in this country and no
place certainly under our Constitution.” Herbert Meyer served as an
intelligence specialist in the Reagan administration, as special assistant to
the cia director and vice chairman on the National
Intelligence Council. This man compared the actions of this administration to
what the Nazis did under Adolf Hitler. (He didn’t say these officials are like
the Nazis, but that they are going about their plan the same way the
Nazis did.) Even the Germans have severely criticized President Obama
for his NSA program! Some critics say he’s acting like
the Gestapo.

The NSA is amassing enormous
power. If it ignores the laws of the land, it can get practically anything
it wants.

Imagine what a tyrannical
government could do with all that information.

Americans have grown
accustomed to and complacent about this steady erosion of their privacy and
liberty. They do not prize freedom as they once did. This carelessness is going
to come at a high cost.

Destroying Separation of Powers

In cases when
Congress refused to implement his radical agenda, President Obama has simply
sidestepped the legislative branch of government and ruled by executive decree.

“We’re not just
going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing
Americans the kind of help they need,” he told reporters before one of his
cabinet meetings in 2014. “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone. And I can use
that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative
actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting
the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the
kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that
people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our
businesses are creating.”

To make it harder
for the courts to rein in his executive decisions, President Obama has
substituted “executive actions” for executive orders. Unlike executive orders,
which are issued as an official cataloged transcript, executive actions are
informal orders from the president to his underlings in the executive branch, making
them more difficult to challenge legally, and making it easier for him to
trash the Constitution—the supreme law of the land. It’s all about lawlessness!

Georgetown law
professor Jonathan Turley, a political liberal, is one of the few legal minds
warning of the danger behind such executive power grabs. “The system of
separation of powers was not created to protect the authority of each branch
for its own sake,” he wrote in a Los Angles Times editorial. “Rather, it
is the primary protection of individual rights because it prevents the
concentration of power in any one branch. In this sense, Obama
is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he
has become the very danger that separation of powers was designed to avoid” (March 9, 2014).

Please read that
paragraph again. If it doesn’t strike fear in you, it should!

In midterm elections
later that year, Mr. Obama and his Democratic Party took a shellacking. Voters
made clear that they were unhappy with the president’s record over the previous
six years. Yet when the president spoke about the result, he acknowledged no
fault or error on his part. Immediately after the election, Mr. Obama renewed
battles over immigration and net neutrality. That November, he issued executive
action on immigration policy. He instructed the executive branch of government
to offer temporary legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. This order
unilaterally enacted immigration reform that congressional lawmakers wouldn’t
enact themselves.

When confronted
about his record of executive overreach, the president taunted his critics:
“Middle-class families can’t wait for Republicans in Congress to do stuff. So
sue me.”

Trashing the Constitution

When he became
president, Barack Obama promised his supporters a radical transformation
of the U.S. By the end of his first term, some supporters felt the change he
promised wasn’t coming fast enough. To them the president explained: “What’s
frustrated people is that I have not been able to force Congress to implement
every aspect of what I said in 2008. … Well, you know, it turns out that our
founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about
change than I would like sometimes.”

This is one of
several statements the president has made showing his distaste for America’s Constitution.
Mr. Obama is an outspoken critic of the Constitution and has long desired to
cast off its restraints. In a 2001 public radio interview, then Senator Obama
said the Constitution reflected the “fundamental flaw” of the United States. He
characterized the supreme law of the land as “a charter of negative liberties.
Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do
to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do
on your behalf.”

There is a reason the Constitution focuses
on what the government can’t do to you: it aims to restrain despotism and to
preserve freedom! That
is its great strength, not its fundamental flaw!

America’s
Constitution has given more freedom to more people than any other government
charter in history. It is a noble document that has inspired and enabled so
many to attain accomplishments that any other system anywhere else in the world
would have denied them.

You would think
Americans would love the Constitution, but that is not the case in this country
anymore. The radical left wants to destroy the Constitution!
The Obama administration and the radically left Democrats are very hostile
to the Constitution, and so are the media. Some in the media say Mr. Obama’s
only real problem has been that he hasn’t used executive
actions to enact radical policy enough. Many liberals now preach that for
America to solve its many problems, it needs to abandon the Constitution.
Most of the educational institutions would like to get rid of it. Many even
argue that it is not even the supreme law of the land! Even one of the Supreme
Court justices said the Constitution is outdated and should not be used.

This too is a
liberal strategy to usurp power that America’s founders never intended
politicians to have. An administration that pays no attention to the
Constitution when it doesn’t match its own agenda has a lot of power!

More recently, the
attack on the Constitution has become even more vile. People have criticized it
not simply for making change more difficult, but because it represents what
they perceive to be institutionalized racism inherent within the
American system!

“The goal of the
Constitution was to make an agreement between factions known as states, which
were built on the backs of black slaves.” That’s a paraphrase of what Alicia
Garza said during a University of Missouri Black Lives Matter event in February
of this year. Garza is one of the three founding members of Black Lives Matter,
an organization for which President Obama and the radical left have been
major supporters. “The people vowing to protect the Constitution,” Garza
said, “are vowing to protect white supremacy and genocide.”

That is a
lie! How can the president and the radical left support such a racist
organization? The truth is that it was the system built by the Constitution
that allowed the United States to become one of the first societies in history
to completely abolish slavery!

Comments like these
are a contemptible attack on the U.S. Constitution—the supreme law of the
land! Such vile statements are stirring up a lot of anger and bitterness
against the system of government established by America’s framers.

Do you realize how
deadly dangerous this trend of lawlessness is? Very few people do. But it gives
insight into the real nature of the threat facing America.

This is quickly moving
America
toward a race war and rule by dictatorship or tyranny.

Lies

Mr. Obama repeatedly said
how transparent his administration would be—yet virtually everything he has
done has been in the dark. Many
journalists have complained that his has been the most opaque administration in
history.

That is the path to
a violent dictator ruling America! And it wouldn’t take but a few large and
destructive riots to reach that nightmare.

In March of 2013,
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was called before Congress and
asked, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on
millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied, “No sir …
not wittingly.” That was a lie, and he knew it.

Attorney General
Eric Holder has also lied to Congress—about the Fast and Furious scandal, and
about what his department did to reporter James Rosen.

As these scandals
pile higher and higher, nobody can get administration officials to tell them anything!
They have lied and lied and lied—and have been caught
in their lies! This administration covers itself in a cloak of deceit.
In some cases, they have even joked or bragged about their lies!

It is impossible to
measure the damage that such deception has wreaked on the fabric of our
politics and our society. But nobody seems to care. When Secretary
Clinton was later investigated over the lies in the White House’s response to
the Benghazi attack, she responded, “What
difference at this point does it make?” Apparently a lot of Americans agree with
her. Mrs. Clinton is now the presumptive Democratic nominee and could become
America’s next president!

That speaks volumes
about our people. We get the leaders we deserve. Especially in a
democratic republic, we the
people must accept the blame for the problems!

Know Your Enemy

What is happening to
America’s leadership, its domestic policy and foreign policy is not just a
quirk of history. The fact that Americans are casting the Constitution to the
ground and encouraging lawlessness in their marriages, in their government and
in their foreign policy has a very definite cause.

We must know our
enemy in order to understand what is going on in America.

America is being attacked from within and without. There are
failures everywhere: economically, culturally, politically, militarily and
morally. Anyone who says there isn’t a real problem here needs to open his
eyes! We need to see what is happening to our nation.

Reprinted from the Aug 2016 Philadelphia
Trumpet

Yours for better living,

Bruce ‘the Poor Man’

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